Five pre-order pitfalls to avoid this Christmas, and how to fix them

We’re only in September and we’re at it again – talking about pre-orders ahead of Christmas! That’s because, when it comes to hospitality, if there’s one thing you can rely on, it’s the fact that nothing ever goes exactly to plan. You can prep for weeks, polish the cutlery until it shines, and line up your pre-orders like ducks in a row, but the big day always has a way of throwing in a surprise or two.

Sometimes it’s small (like three people swapping their mains at the table and pretending they definitely ordered it that way), and sometimes it’s big (like, say, an uninvited fire alarm deciding to go off during the event).

The truth is, in hospitality, the unexpected is inevitable. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be prepared. Pre-ordering should be the stress-busting superhero of busy service, but when it goes wrong, it can quickly turn into the villain of the piece.

That’s why we’re here. Zonal’s Customer Success team have shared the top 5 things that can (and often do) go wrong with pre-orders on the big day, and how we can help you sidestep the chaos. Because while we can’t stop the universe from throwing curveballs, we can make sure pre-order isn’t one of them.

1. The Night Before Panic

It’s the day before the Christmas parties start arriving, you’ve been chasing the party for their final pre-orders and they’ve not picked up your calls. Then the night before, they open their emails and realise they have missed their pre-order cut-off.

Our fix: Use your Host access to do it!

Pre-Order allows you to set a cut-off. This is a timeframe that you display to your guests when booking as to how long they have to make their mind up of what they will eat on the day. But we know it doesn’t always work out like that and people miss a deadline – so as a Host, we allow you to make pre-order changes within the Guest portal up until the early hours of their arrival.

Once the Guest Pre-Order cut-off has been reached, the guest will not be able to make an order. A message will show stating “Attendees cannot be added after the pre-order cut-off”. If selecting to edit an attendee choice, a red message will display showing “Pre-Ordering is now closed. Please contact the restaurant if you have not submitted your choices or if you need to discuss this further”.

The Host, however, will have the ability to add any additional attendee names to the booking, as well as make amendments to the pre-order selections. The Host cut-off will be defined in the booking summary under pre-order – for the majority, it’s configured to be around 04:00 on the day of the booking – after this point, you’ll need to make changes on the POS.

2. Arriving and changing the order

You had a neat list of who ordered what. Then once everyone has arrived, someone decides they don’t actually eat chicken, they’ve gone vegan “since Tuesday,” and suddenly the table’s a game of musical chairs with mains. Having pre-orders delayed in sending to the kitchen lets you make last-minute swaps quickly, so you’re not left with a lonely chicken dish.

Our fix: Update it on the POS.

Once a pre-order reaches the POS, they are stored on the till as delayed orders.

To view the orders, navigate to “Pick up Account” on the till (often found in Options).  This will display all open accounts within the sales area.

You’ll be looking for “Delayed Orders”.

You want to select the name of the booking. when selected, it’ll present a message that “The order preparation has not been started. Request this now?” – you’ll need to select “No” here.

If you select Yes, you’ll need to quickly tell your team to stop prepping as this will send the order through to the kitchen, but it won’t have a table number.

After selecting “No”, the ticket will show. You’ll then need to select “Tables” and click the table number, for which you’ll be asked “Are you sure you want to move Account Number X to Tables XX” – to which you’ll select “All Items”.

You will now have the opportunity to pick up the account and further modify it.

If the order (as shown below) is in an orange state, it’s because the order is in a Hold state. This will prevent the order sending to the printer. You will need to select the “Hold Delayed Order” button to then release the order (it’ll revert to white text) and this, once saved, will send to the relevant printers.

Doing this means that you have the opportunity to set the table number, and make the pre-order changes at 11:30am when the event is at 12:00pm

3. The “I Definitely Didn’t Order That” Moment

A guest swears they ordered the steak. Your pre-order sheet says fish. Now you’re stuck playing referee in a battle of wills.

Our fix: Place cards, chef reports, run sheets and portals. We’ve produced many routes to viewing pre-orders on the day or in the run up.

Place Cards:

You can have these on the table for the guests arrival. Having the guests name on one side and their pre-order on the other, whether they’ve have had a tipple or their attention is not on you when handing out the food, a place card can help with that.

Chef Report:

The Chef Report can be extracted for future dates, as well as the current day. Viewing either by:

Products – for quantities of products/items,

Date – useful when selecting a date range.

Time – perfect for seeing requirements throughout the day.

Event – a break down by party.

Guest – showing a breakdown of each guest attending and their specific items ordered.

Run Sheets:

If you have our Central Reservations feature enabled, you will have Run Sheets.

A Run Sheet will offer everything you need for a booking, From booking details, to pre-orders, booking requests and even dietary requirements. A run sheet is perfect for those larger parties.

All of these are digital receipts and confirmations. Both you and the guests can see exactly what they ordered ensuring there’s no awkward debates mid-service of who ordered what, or whether they chose custard or ice cream with that Christmas Pudding!

4. The Dreaded 86’d Item

Everything’s running smoothly… until the kitchen runs out of an item on the Thursday night. Cue Friday morning, pre-orders are failing to send to the POS.

Our fix: With live menu management, sold-out dishes are instantly updated in the pre-order system. At the sender window time (for the majority it’s defined at 04:00), pre-order will fail to send to the POS as it awaits your action. It’s the system’s way of flagging that you need to act.

The Chef Report helps you manage this. Here’s some simple steps on how you can resolve an out of stock issue:

1. Navigate to the Reports Tab.
2. From the Report Categories, select Pre-Order.
3. Using the date range selector, amend the start and end date to the current day.
   All pre-orders will display. Using the Event view of the report, users are presented clearly with the reason for a pre-order not sending. Should the reason for “Product Out of Stock”. If this error shows, you will need to go to the POS and put the item back in stock.
4. Choose the option beside the booking to Resend Pre-Order.
   There is only 1 retry attempt possible, should there still be an issue and the items fails to send you have to manually add it to the pre-order.

5. The Curveball You Can’t Predict

Gas leak. Fire alarm. A delivery that never arrives. Hospitality is full of chaos you can’t control. But when pre-orders run smoothly, at least it’s one less fire (sometimes literally) to put out.

Our fix: Test before the day. We can’t recommend enough that you test with your team. Maybe role play, maybe ask your Account Manager for support with one of the Customer Success team. We are here to help take the pre-order stress off your plate, so you’ve got the headspace to deal with whatever else the day throws at you.

At the end of the day, hospitality will always keep you on your toes, because if it’s not a guest changing their mind, it’s the fire alarm going off right as mains are about to go out (and yes, that happened to me with 250 covers waiting for Christmas meals on black Friday!).

While we can’t stop the unexpected, we can make sure pre-orders don’t add to the chaos. With the right system in place, you’ll save time, reduce stress, and keep your focus where it matters most: delivering a brilliant experience for your guests.

Because let’s face it – unexplained fire alarms happen. Pre-order disasters don’t have to!